As Cool as I Am

This is one of the best books that I have ever read. (again and again). It is shocking, and suprising. This is not your typical ANYTHING. This is more than a coming of age, more than a book about a troubled family. You dont need to be any age to love this book and to identify with the young girl. I have lent this to many friends, all from different walks of life,and they have all come back telling me how amazing this book was. The only part that I have trouble with is the ending. I NEED more! I need to see the rest of the story, and the rest of her life. It is quite the cliff hanger.

I thought this book was amazing and actually very plausible. It's depressing as well, but a good read. Lucy Diamond and her mother are dynamic characters and their relationship is very real. I'd recommend this to people of all ages. I read it first when I was eleven and quite unsuspecting, but it certainly opened my eyes to some realities of which I was previously unaware.

I thought that this book was excellent and I congratulate the author on a job extremely well done. Lucy is a fascinating and memorable character, as is the entire story. I recommend it strongly.

I picked up this book at the library cause i liked the look of the cover. i found myself loving the characters especially Kenny who loves lucy so intensely with a love i think you only have when you're that young. the characters were old beyond thier years but it works because of the dialog and depth of the people. it was a rare library find that i think i may buy in paperback for my own home collection. i would definately recommend it for reading.

Just when "chick-lit" seems to have probed every female niche, Pete Fromm -- a guy -- comes along with one of the more startlingly beautiful and evocative tales of young womanhood in "As Cool As I Am."Lucy Diamond's father is a wise-cracking lumberjack who says dumb things like "sharp as a bowling ball" and adios, amoebas!" and sends home lewd postcards from his job in a distant Canadian forest. He comes home to Great Falls, Mont., only a few times a year, and only for a few lusty days. And always, he buzz-cuts Lucy's hair.Lucy's mother is present but often unaccounted for. With her husband gone and Lucy entering high school, she's taken a job and maybe a lover or two, leaving her daughter to contemplate life, love, sex and loyalty -- mostly her mother's -- on her own.Lucy quickly proves to be a clear-eyed, graceful and immensely funny narrator. While she hurtles toward womanhood -- and all that entails -- she heaps insecurities upon uncertainties as she explores her own budding sexuality. But as Lucy blooms, her mother's youth is fading. The syncopation of their separate rise and fall provides the book's most tender and most trying elements.Fromm's voice -- on loan to Lucy -- is provocative, gritty, erotic, hilarious and genuine, and this book is a fresh breath of teen spirit.